We thought through all the options. The best we could come up with was seeing if there was another nesting mother and set the eggs with her. I called around to a bunch of local wildlife rescues, but because it was Saturday the only one I could reach was the Austin Wildlife Rescue. They agreed that setting the eggs with another mother was probably the best recourse. Sure enough, there was another nesting mother across the street. We took in all 20 eggs, candled them, and 6 were certainly viable. I donned a pair of heavy work gloves and set about annoying the other mother duck as I set the 6 eggs underneath her. Boy, she can bite! I went back a few minutes later and she had repositioned herself over all the eggs. So, it’s the best we can do given the situation. We’ll see what happens.
I went around the yard doing some cleanup of the feathers. We went into our neighbor’s backyard to see if we saw feathers… and we got more than we bargained for. Just behind their back fence, just inside the greenbelt (i.e. just inside lots of brush and cover), we saw the half-eaten carcass of the duck. I went back into the greenbelt and looked around. Given the grasses have grown much higher and with the rains last night, it was easier to tell that certainly something has a pattern of behavior. In fact, I found a second carcass just a few feet from this one, likely that of the duck from last month.
I want to figure out what this is that’s eating the ducks.
Stuff From Hsoi 